There is "a conceptual derivation between the careless practice of relativism, the anti-religious and anti-Christian excesses, and the cultural and ethical regression of societies". With these words, card. Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian Bishops Conference (Cei), in opening the Permanent Episcopal Council in Rome today, described the danger of "Christianophobia" in Europe, making an appeal for "religious freedom" as the "stalwart of the civilisation of human rights and as the guarantee of a genuine pluralism and true democracy". On the background, the "near silence of the international community" on the "persecutions" of Christians in India and the "religious cleansing" in Iraq. To the political leaders, Bagnasco asked for "a tax system based on the family ratio" to cater to the needs of "single-income households", which "are responding as they can to the wave of price rises that in the meantime never stop soaring" and insisted on the need to "defend the unity of the household", without using the word family "for unions that are no family". (continued)
